👦 Week 263 - Sons

The new school year began, with my boys now in years six and four. L is also back teaching on selected days, so I’ve returned to drop-off duties when she’s working. It won’t be long before neither son holds my hand on the walk to school, so I need to remember to savour it 🥹

After a week of holiday-recharging and mild excess, I had two intensive park kickarounds with H and two swims at the gym to get me back on track. My breaststroke rhythm is getting better: despite the pool traffic, I’m averaging 1,000m in 30 minutes. However, my footballing strength/speed advantage has evaporated and H is now regularly beating his old man in our 1-on-1 matches.

I joined my first CTO lunch club Zoom on Friday. Room topics were on (inevitably) AI, and finding a new job as a CTO. The attendees were friendly and had varied experience levels. After years of imposter syndrome at tech events, I’ve finally reached a stage where I’m comfortable speaking up and feel that I belong.

Two hard-fought wins for the Arsenal: away at Villa and at home against Chelsea. H was especially pleased by the latter result so that he could maintain bragging rights with the misguided group of Chelsea fans in his school class.

We took H to his youth media day at Potters Bar Town FC, his football club for the new season. After team photos, the coaches gave the parents a mild lecture on our expected behaviour(!) while the boys had mini-matches on the pitches. I skipped the parents v coaches match, sensibly leaving it to the twenty-something dads.

I ended the week with the pub quiz at The Goat. Our team was down to just four, compared to an average of eight grizzled veterans in the other teams. We finished second-from-last, winning a bag of popcorn, which I take as a moral victory.